Late Payment Directive six months on: public payments still much too slow

The FINANCIAL — Precisely six months on from the deadline for transposition of the revised Late Payment Directive, European businesses still on average wait 61 days to receive their payment from public administrations.

with peaks of 170 days in Italy and 159 days in Greece – instead of the 30 days required by the Directive, according to EUROCHAMBRES.

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Only Finland and Estonia comply with the 30 days limit. Only 6% of businesses believe that their governments help to protect them from the threat of redundancies and bankruptcies. While about half of them expect a loss of income and reduced growth perspectives due to late payments.

EUROCHAMBRES has thus written to the Lithuanian Presidency urging a debate at the next Competitiveness Council on the lack of progress in most member states, according to EUROCHAMBRES.

“The situation is dramatic,” said Arnaldo Abruzzini, Secretary General of EUROCHAMBRES. “Only nine countries transposed the directive on time, most others have gradually followed, while Belgium and Germany still haven’t done so. More worryingly, the gap between transposing the directive and implementing it remains huge across much of the EU, particularly southern member states. How can we talk about moderni sing public administrations while in four member states they still take more than 130 days to pay their bills?” Abruzzini added.

Zero tolerance?

Vice-President Antonio Tajani and the European Commission annouced a zero tolerance attitude
to member states not applying the directive. EUROCHAMBRES urges the Commission to deliver on this pledge and calls on the Competitiveness Council of 26-27 September to address the issue of poor implementation.

“It is crucial to Europe’s competitiveness that the revised Late Payment Directive is implemented effectively–public administrations must lead the way by settling their bills within 30 days. If not,
this directive will soon become just another piece of legislation for the archives while businesses continue to struggle with cash-flow problems,” said Mr Abruzzini.